May 19, 2014

Open Letter V to Shri Narendra Modi: India at crossroads, green-shoots in social equity

Shri Narendra Modi
Prime Minister designate

Dear Modi Ji, 

Your slogan that you wish to create an India where every Muslim youth will have a computer in the other hand while holding the Holy Quran in one hand has inspired a new metric of thought around the dimension of social equity. 

Reservations, whether for Muslims or for any other community, caste or religion have only caused crippling of mind-sets and dirty politics in the long term, despite having some merit for the short term. 

I urge an open-minded examination of the following simple ideas, for all under-privileged communities including Muslims, for a period of 20 years from the day this policy is announced such as any future governments will have the courage to tinker with them at the cost of the overwhelming derision of the populace on one hand and for ensuring continued Human Capital Development across at least one full generation if not two: 

1) Grant of exempt from Income Tax status for each male child / youth undertaking accredited education (say from a school affiliated to CBSE or ICSE) of at least 2000 INR per month, up to higher secondary education level.  

2) Grant of exempt from Income Tax status be double for girl / female children at 3000 INR per month, up to higher secondary education level. 

3) For college and higher level education and restricted up to the age of 25 years these numbers for boys and girls respectively have to be 50% higher, i.e. 3000 INR and 4500 INR respetively, per month. 

4) These exemptions must be Inflation Indexed so that there is no need to tinker with the continuity of this policy for a period of two decades. Each future year, the exemption level will be the next higher 100 Rupee round figure for ease of computations. 

5) For students at Graduation & Post Graduation level, the State must guarantee Scholarships at these equivalent rates to any student who is able to produce proof of lack of familial income and if that applicant has an academic achievement score that is greater than 1 standard deviation of the results of all participants in the immediately prior public examination (such as that of a University or an Educational Board). This must be kept at par for even students of non-OBC, non-reservation communities. Talent, hard-work must be guaranteed a pathway to progress irrespective of the familial financial competency. That truly was the goal of the thinking on social equity and distorted in vote bank politics of reservations and appeasements. 

6) Not just the State, but the financially well-endowed and concerned citizens including corporates and big business, anyone who donates to Prime Minister's Social Equity Endowment for Education (lets establish one such now) receives at least a 100% exemption of this amount from taxable income. Section 80G is ineffective as it only grants 50% exemption and that is a point for another letter to you, in the future. The concept of Gupt-Daan, wherein anyone can donate totally anonymously without any details of the donor being captured in the system or any questions being asked must be made truly effective. Every Bank Branch in India should have the facility for anyone to walk in with cash earnt by whatsoever means to donate anonymously and to ensure that such funds indeed reach the Endowment, a receipt must be issued by such bank counters with unique serial numbers which when punched on the website of the PMSEEE produce confirmation details of the amount, time, place at which donation was made. 

7) I urge, you deploy your charisma to convey across a point to every stake-holder of our civilization that India will have endless Akhadas for helping create Mohammad Alis. So what if as Cassius Clay he was famished, under-nourished and deprived, if he could find his way through to the training, the hard work he put up he indeed became the Champion. No dole-outs or distributions merely because one was purportedly unlucky to be born a Muslim or an Adivasi but has therefore become entitled to live a life of dependence and mind and soul crippling reservations. The point must become absolutely clear to the psuedo-secularists, the clergy and the entire population of India, that we are that civilization where every Cassius Clay has the opportunity to be a Mohammad Ali. 

8) Reservations on one hand only provided a temporary relief to certain types of people but has been endlessly diluting our competitive and performance DNA as a nation. We have to become a nation of Mohammad Alis and that too grateful and happy Alis! So far, the political class has in the post-Independence India never focused on making Mohammad Alis, but only keeping the challenged Cassius Clays as challenged and dependent, permanently. I need you to empower every driven, motivated Champion to reach the goal of his destiny, that is to be the Champion that Allah / God / Bhagwan wanted him to be. 

9) If education is the fore-bearer of all social equity, creation of ability and thus handling the un-levelled fields of opportunity, then we cannot leave behind the acknowledgement much more desperately due for the profession of teaching in India. Compared to any other profession, our teachers earn the least. A Guru has one of the noblest respnosibilities of inculcating values and create much better human beings than just teach medicine, engineering, management, mathematics, statistics, accountancy, geography or history. It is well understood in the Indian Civilization that "Bhookhe Pet Bhajan na honhi Gopala". So, until the competitive synergies sweep our nation into a state of much higher excellence, I urge you to consider a 20 year policy for having Income Tax Slabs that are at least twice at each rate of taxation for anyone who is a full time teacher with an accredited Educational Body, right from nursery education to the post graduate level education. Let the Governance of this nation eventually and now bestow the credit, respect and care that has always been undertaken by every admirable Raj-purush in our Ancient Civilization on the Gurus, the Rishis and the Sadhus. Our teachers are likely the true Gurus, Rishis and Sadhus by their karma. If we are indeed keen on a varn-vyavastha that is based on Karma and not Janma then I am very hopeful that your Government will make early moves in according the rightful economic upliftment as well as the moral and emotional respect for the entire teaching force in our country. 

Vande Mataram, Jai Hind
Sushil kedia

May 11, 2014

Open Letter IV to Shri Narendra Modi: Har Aam Aadmi ko ab Khaas Bana do

Respected Modi Ji,

A moment when endless number of Indians are holding their breath in constructive anticipation of you taking over the helm of Governance of this Nation, I place some humble thoughts for you to evaluate so that growth, opportunity, entrepreneurship can be percolated down to every single unit of our population.

For many decades, oganisations such as the World Bank kept on coaching the whole world that countries such as India need to control their population for getting on the growth curve. We know by now, it was incorrect. The real assets of any civilization and every nation are its people. Let nature determine which soil helps flourish what population size. Yet, what is true is that if each and every unit of any population can become self-reliant and achieve the DNA of entrepreneurship then the larger the population the more prosperous a nation begins to become.
Here is a simple point by point plan:

Creation of the Ministry of Growth & Development: A new ministry, directly under the PMO, be created focusing on Growth & Development. A co-ordination ministry that will work along with all other ministries, every District Collector, every PSU chairman, every Revenue, Intelligence, Enforcement head with a singular focus of expeditiously moving forward any and every growth and development agenda.

    Power of Incentives: Let there be a corpus of a minimum of 542 Crores of Rupees, corresponding to the 542 Districts in India. This corpus shall only be for rewarding District Administration level officers of the Government of India on a competitive basis for their results and efforts in bringing growth and development in their respective districts. Incentives work more than anything else. Let the new model of Governance recognize the power of Economic Incentives. Let there be tremenduous respect in the pursuit of growth at every level and let there be pride awaiting to ride on the shoulders of the minutest level of Administrative machinery. This corpus be spent in awarding, incentivizing and monetizing the measurable growth and development at the district level. Let the culture be established where the District Collector of each and every district is the Chief Entrepreneur of his district, if not the Chief Executive Officer of his district. Let there be an upwards pressure from each district to seek resources, solutions and results for each district. Let there be a new class of highest civilian honours and awards, such as the Param Visisht Vikas Medals to celebrate the achievements of administrative officials who would produce trail-blazing results of growth and development within their domains and impact the most number of lives constructively in empowering them to create Swarojgar. The endless Swarojgar Yojnas christened with the names of various political luminaries of yester-decades is best discontinued with immediacy.

     Incentivise Micro-Finance & bring it into mainstream investment model: For decades there are tax breaks on investments in Equity Linked Savings Schemes or by way of Long Term Capital Gains or in Infrastructure Bonds. Let India in its new form under your leadership be the first country in the world to recognize the power of empowering the most microscopic economic apparatus in any nation, its lowest economic denominators – the human beings who have no capital, no land, but they do have an under-developed human capital. The Human Capital is the source of all wealth. A piece of gold or a piece of land has no monetary value if human beings do not accord it value. Hence, any other physical form of wealth is at best a mechanism for storage of wealth, whereas all sources of wealth are the human aspirations, abilities and persistence. Let us get to the core of all wealth creation, i.e. to have a world class apparatus for developing the wealth and income generating ability of every human being. The post Independence political discourse has off and on appealed to emotions of the landless by balking at the varied ideologies of land reforms. Why do we have to limit our imagination for our rural brotherhood that unless and until they have land they have no other abilities? Why? Each and every rural under-employed, landless or capital-less individual has a far more powerful capital, that of being a human being.  Lets create the mechanism, resources, opportunities for ensuring this human being flourishes. Competitively structured Micro-Finance Corporations run by professionals be encouraged to be established. It should be modeled on the lines of a Mutual Fund or Unit Trust. Any contributions from individual assessees up to 1 lakh Rupees per annum and upto 10 lakh per annum from Corporate Assessees in such corporations be allowed as a deduction from taxable income. Let there be no monopoly ever in any layer of this new growth orbit. Competition allocates resources best.

    Establishment of Skill Development Corporations: At each and every District level there must be one Skill Development Corporation at least. If there can be more such corporations in any single district to compete with each other even better. Let these be established by the private sector, with a motivation for profit. Let them be supported actively by the District Collectorate in the same way that State Industrial Development Corporations have nurtured new industry in any state. The Skill Development Corporations will study, evaluate, configure the suit of skills that are in the shortest supply in any district and create Vocational Training Programmes. Un-employed, under-employed individuals with no capital or land can come to these VTPs run by the SDCs with total responsibility on themselves. Let the individuals be financed by Micro-Finance Corporations to undertake these courses. Actively in collaboration the MFC and the SDC should hand-hold the trained individuals through the entire entrepreneurship life-cycle. Say for example if an individual is trained in providing cellphone repair services then right from selection of the location of his small “bhakhda” to branding it, to promoting it, to creating customer delight, there be Continued Entrepreneurship Education (the same way that a Chartered Accountant or an Investment Professional has to undertake ongoing Professional Education).

5.       To expect that Government can and will do everything is in any case wrong. It also becomes the origin of sloth, corruption and negativity. The power of incentives will keep private enterprises on their toes to compete amongst each other in investing very well in the human skills of under-privileged India.

     As this gathers momentum and as a time comes when on an average 50000 successful new entrepreneurs are created in each district giving India a total of two and a half crore new entrepreneurs, we would have built a formidable base. The multiplier effect of such income generation, consumption and savings is baffling and can hardly be over-emphasized. At such a stage the MFCs and the SDCs can join hands to foster endless number of co-operatives based on what are the unique productivities of each district. If one Amul could change so many lives and if one Lijjat Papad could create livelihood and respect for so many, what can these privately funded and publicly owned co-operatives with bare minimum gubernatorial interference achieve is beyond anyone’s ability to imagine. At such a stage if the brands and intangible assets created in such collectively owned establishments can be structured into separate companies and those companies are listed on the stock exchanges, then we would have reached a goal of creating a country-wide institution of producing millionaires in every mohalla, every bye-lane.

Many variations are feasible of this simple idea. The core of such thinking is Land Reforms have been a much abused political slogan. Let us go deep within the core of all wealth creation, i.e. raising the value and stock of our human capital.

Jai Hind & Vande Mataram,